Posts Tagged ‘quantitative genetics’

As I promised, here’s the second part of the list, that corresponds to the papers commented in volume II. It was particularly difficult to find PDFs for all of them , and some links go to the publisher which sells the paper for a (in my opinion) substantial amount of money. I encourage you to go to the library, find alternative resources (JSTOR, archive.org…), or ask a colleague. I have most of them if anyone is interested.

The Hill-Robertson’66 paper, one of my all-time-favourites, is not in the list. Actually, Hill didn’t include any of his own papers!

The Bill Hill’s List, part II

Nature of Selection Response

Castle WE (1905) The Mutation Theory of Organic Evolution, from the Standpoint of Animal Breeding. Science21:521-525. [PDF]

Jennings HS (1916) Heredity, Variation and the Results of Selection in the Uniparental Reproduction of DIFFLUGIA CORONA. Genetics 1:407-534. [PDF]

Despite having a long time interest in evolutionary biology, I deliberately avoided papers on animal breeding and pure quantitative genetics, and I thought they were not relevant to modern evolutionary thought. As I gained more interest in mathematical models I started to read some of these classic papers, and realized that some of the issues I’m interested in (such as genetic linkage) were studied in depth by livestock breeders. Now I regret I didn’t pay more attention to them in the past. However, I have a chance to redeem myself and put some of these papers in my reading list. Which ones? Well, that’s a hard decision, but fortunately I found a list compiled by quantitative geneticist William Hill.

William (Bill) Hill was invited to contribute with a volume to the famous “Benchmark Papers in Genetics” series by Springer. However, he came up with two volumes. I could not find any of them in the University of Essex library so I decided, for the first time, to visit the British Library. They had, indeed, both volumes. I forgot to bring some cash so I couldn’t afford to do copies. Hence, as in the old times, I grabbed a pencil and transcribed the lists of papers from both volumes. It was a hard yet rewarding task. Because most of these papers are quite old, I was confident that I should find them in JSTOR or another similar repository (and I did!).

The best bits of the books are the comments by Bill Hill himself on the papers which, obviously, I cannot reproduce here. However, just the list of papers is of great value, and I thought there may be someone else interested. So, I’ve compiled both lists and looked for PDFs and links to author’s biographies. Here’s the list of papers from volume I. The second bit will be posted soon. Hope you find it useful.